I recently came home from a nice long trip from the Cayman Islands. I wrote a very lovely post chronicling my time in the Caymans and when i went to publish my photos to the post I'd written a few days ago, the post was gone. Disappeared into thin air. So forgive me for not writing sooner about the Caymans, but honestly this post isn't about the Caymans. I'll be posting photos of my trip soon and if I gather enough time, I'll write another post chronicling my time in Grand Cayman.
For today I am writing about something every little girl thinks about at least once in her life. It's a moment, a lifetime, a feeling, an event, an emotion. It's marriage/falling in love. I'm starting to feel like I missed the boat. Now don't misunderstand me, I know I am young and I have plenty of time to get married, have babies, a dog named Fido and a white picket fence - that's not what my post is about today. It's rather about the weird feeling I've been having lately when I see my friends, whom are the same age as I, walk down the aisle. Did I misunderstand the fairy tales I read as a child - am I really suppose to find Prince Charming now? I am suddenly overcome with this feeling that I am missing the boat or rather that the girl who's always ahead of the curve has somehow missed it completely. HELP ME!
Today as I was packing my life away into boxes for Chicago, I stopped to take breaks surfing the web and my favorite website of all: Facebook. Facebook is an online social network that allows friends to share their lives with each other via the internet. AKA: Online stalking that won't get you thrown in jail. Anyway, as I looked through the status updates of all my friends (which I do quite frequently) I saw that another one of my friends had said the three letter word that got her a big ring and a man forever: YES - to that one simple question.
Now this wouldn't be such a big deal if it was one of my friends from high school who I rarely spoke to and friended me on facebook because it was proper - but this was no the case. The friend who was announcing to the world her engagement was Laura, a friend of mine from Liberal Arts Council who always had a strong will and was super brilliant and beautiful. She was fully capable of taking care of herself and being her own woman, yet as I scanned her profile I saw excited, gleeful pictures of her showing off her new diamond ring and I felt a pang of jealousy.
Laura was headed to law school as well, yet she managed to snag a husband on her way there. Hum, did I just miss the curve? Back in the "olden" days women had to get married because they'd starve or be considered spinsters or be considered a witch or a hag, but today that's not the case. Today women are suppose to be confident, independent, make their own careers, money and be like Beyonce: Independent Women. Yet staring at facebook I realized that Laura was just like Beyonce but also had her guy. How the hell did she do that? I began looking through others profiles, my best friend from high school Kamrin is also getting married this August, but I never felt the same jealousy because she was Kamrin, she'd been with Tyler forever. I looked through some other people's facebooks - Kelsey, Libby, Jordan: Engaged, Engaged, Engaged. Hum...
I don't know why all of the sudden I'm feeling the pressure to find a mate and be together forever like some sort of fairy tale, but suddenly I'm a bit jealous. I think it's maybe because I just realized there is no other age beyond 21 to look forward to. Nobody says, "HELL YES, I'M 27!" Instead people lie and say their 19 from here on out. When did I grow up? When did my generation decide we were old enough to make life long commitments such as marriage? I still refer to my mom as an adult and myself as a child, at least in my head. I ask her advice on everything. I can barely get my loan papers filled out correctly for law school much less commit the rest of my life to someone else as their wife.
Gosh, I'm confused and still a bit jealous.
